That makes sense. Short bits of wire adds capacitance to the signal and combined with 22pF the total value ended up higher and rendered the clock useless in the end. I wouldn't have caught this since I usually have mine much closer to the chip. Maybe make a tiny PCB board with 2 angled pin header at 0.1" spacing and a jumper wire to connect to ground? Since not all chips have convenient ground pin next to the xtal pin. ATTiny84 for example, if one wished to use external clock, those pins are next to VCC and the nearest GND pin is on other side of the chip.